Guilty Consequence
by alanwolfmoon
Summary: Cameron finds House hiding in a closet because of severe shoulder pain. She doesn't think it's a conversion disorder, even though he's written it off as that. Set soon after H


Cameron sighed, digging through House's desk.

Foreman went home.

House had seemingly disappeared completely around noon.

Cuddy needed amber's chart filled out.

And Cameron sort of doubted House would have stuffed that chart in a closet.

But... it didn't seem to be here.

She sighed, walking out into the hall.

She reached the correct closet and pulled the door open.

She knelt quickly, as she saw not only a fresh stack of paperwork, but the wayward diagnostician that was supposed to have filled it out.

He was holding his right shoulder, obviously in agony. His face was pale and covered in beads of sweat, his shirt was damp, he had his head pressed back hard against the wall, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut.

"What happened?"

He swallowed hard, panting.

"It's not... ah... not physical."

Cameron's confused gaze softened a little, and she carefully reached over and felt the obviously painful shoulder.

It was swollen and inflamed. It also didn't feel right, somehow.

"When did it start?"

"As soon... agh... as I remembered.... seeing... symptom."

"You mean when you woke up right after being tossed around in a bus crash?"

He didn't answer.

"I know it wasn't that bad at first, when did it start hurting more?"

"After... *agh!*"

House leaned forward a tiny bit, clenching even more, panting raggedly.

Cameron helped him brace the arm until the wave of pain passed.

"After I remembered... it was amber."

"After you fell because you had a heart attack. It still wasn't this bad then. You were walking around."

"Then... when I woke up... knew she was...."

"After the seizure that widened your skull fracture. Still wasn't this bad."

House opened his eyes.

"He... didn't... he just... knocked right *ahh!...* into me.... fell... don't know.... woke up.... hurt... couldn't get up...." he seemed to be reliving whatever had happened.

Cameron sighed.

"Your shoulder started hurting really bad after you fell on it. Again."

House looked at her, swallowing again.

"Psychological... pain can man... manifest... itself as... physical...."

"Yeah, yeah, shut up. That was the case last year, not this time. You were in a bus crash, you fell, you had a seizure, you fell and it made you pass out. There's probably something wrong with that shoulder."

He shook his head, then clenched again, unable to speak.

Cameron helped him hold it still again.

He relaxed a little, eyelids fluttering.

"Never... felt pain... like this. Not physical."

Cameron rolled her eyes.

"Have you ever shattered a bone before? Have you ever broken a bone that's got constant stress on it from muscles that are automatically trying to keep it inside a socket?"

He didn't answer.

Cameron sighed, shaking her head.

"Fine. Let's get you out of this closet, anyway."

He nodded, and she pulled his left arm over her shoulders, lifting him to his feet.

She promptly had to shove him against the wall to keep him from falling.

"And being stuck in a closet for... let's see... probably about seven hours, messed up your leg."

He nodded weakly, barely managing to stay conscious.

Cameron ended up having to nearly carry him to the diagnostics office.

She helped him sit in the recliner, biting her lip as he tried to lift his bad leg onto the footstool but failed, gasping.

She didn't move to help though, just went to get a wheelchair so she could take him down to radiology.

House passed out when she helped him onto the table, and she barely managed to keep him from falling off.

House groaned, as he opened his eyes.

Then he frowned, looking at his arm, which was in a fiberglass brace from the shoulder to the elbow, with a strap across his chest.

An IV was going in the other arm, and he felt high.

Something snapped in front of him, and he jumped.

Cameron was standing there, smiling a little.

"Conversion disorders don't break bones. You need surgery. The head of your humerus is completely broken off. It can't have been like that the whole time, it was probably just cracked until Wilson knocked you over."

House groaned, pressing his head back into the pillows.

Cameron shook her head, walking around next to him.

"Next time you've got pain somewhere after a bus crash... mention it. Pain isn't always in your head."

He looked at her.

Then he snorted lightly, nodding.

Cameron smiled and rolled her eyes.

Then she sat down in the chair next to his bed.

He raised his head, glaring at her.

She smirked.

"Cuddy doesn't trust you with the morphine drip. If you're upset enough you thought that much pain could have been psychological, you're probably going to try and drown it."

House sighed, head dropping back into the pillows.

"I'm not gonna try to drown it."

Cameron tilted her head.

"Why not? And don't tell me it's because you don't take drugs."

"Ok."

Cameron rolled her eyes.

House sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

"Why do they leave brown moldy-looking stains on hospital ceilings?"

"Um.... because they've got more important things to spend money on?"

House sighed again, clenching his right hand, a grimace appearing on his face.

"They..." he clenched his teeth, looking away. Then he looked back at the ceiling, "I failed."

Cameron, halfway though the motion of picking up her coffee cup, stopped. She had thought House was going to take forever to make his point, if he even had one other than leading her on.

"What do you mean?"

"Amber was my patient, and I failed to save her. The one stupid time I knew what to do to make him happy, and I failed."

he closed his eyes, clenching and unclenching his right hand.

Cameron watched him, biting her lip.

"He... dammit!" House banged the brace on the rail, then grabbed it, pressing his head back hard into the pillows.

Cameron sighed, standing up and putting her hand on House's shoulder.

He closed his eyes, refusing to make eye contact.

"You didn't have a chance to succeed. There was never a chance. It was a cruel situation, you thought there was a chance, and you fought as hard as you possibly could have for that chance, and then it was pulled out from in front of you. It was always an illusion. There was nothing anyone could have done."

"Pigs."

Cameron blinked.

"Pigs and the guy from the dump truck."

A silence.

Cameron closed her eyes.

"If we had filtered her blood though a pig's kidneys it would have cleared the toxins out of her system, and the guy from the dump truck was only rejected as an organ donor because he was heavy and a smoker. Is that what you meant?"

House nodded.

"And you were supposed to think of that while you were in a coma?"

He looked at her.

"Physical illness is not your fault. You made a calculated set of choices biased on the evidence you had, and took risks knowing it was the only thing that would give you any chance whatsoever of saving her life. All your decisions were the best thing you could have done at that time, with what you knew. There were no flaws in your logic. The only thing you can blame for the fact you were in a coma when you needed to be awake was a physical even that occurred as catastrophic result of your correct logical sequence. You took that risk because you knew it was worth it. The only part of you that failed is your body. And that isn't your fault."

House turned his head away, so she couldn't see his face.

He... he was feeling guilty.

House.

Cold, uncaring, logical House was beating himself up because he felt he should have done better for his friend.

Cameron gently squeezed his good shoulder.

"What you're feeling... it's normal. It's common."

He swallowed.

"It's called guilt, House. Irrational guilt. The feeling that you've let someone down. You care about someone, and something happens, and you blame yourself. And it sucks. And there's only two ways to deal with it. You either beat yourself into the ground, or you let it out. I know the second one doesn't sound anything like you, but... it's the healthier way to go."

"I don't want to feel ok. I shouldn't feel ok. I shouldn't be ok. I shouldn't, I don't want to be ok!"

Cameron nodded, rubbing his shoulder.

"I know, House. I know."

He curled, tense and upset.

"Go away!"

She nodded but didn't leave.

"Go the hell away! Leave me—ah!"

House had managed to stress the broken bones, apparently.

He curled even further, clutching at his shoulder and panting.

"It's ok. It'll all be ok," said Cameron, soothingly rubbing his back.

He jerked away from her briefly, but was too weak to maintain the awkward position.

He finally leaned back into her hand, grunting with pain.

"I'll just stay here," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, "and call the surgeon. Tell him what's on your x-rays."

Fifteen minutes into her talk with "Dr. Stevenson" (also known as her closed cellphone), he started talking, and she turned to listen.


End file.
